Formula tips and tricks

When you start entering a formula in Excel Online, the following tips and tricks might come in handy.

To:

Follow this best practice:

Quickly copy formulas

To quickly enter the same formula into a range of cells, select the range you want to calculate, type the formula, and press Ctrl+Enter.

For example, if you type =SUM(A1:B1) in the first cell of the selected range C1:C5 and press Ctrl+Enter, the formula is copied to each cell of that range, using A1 as a relative reference.

Use Formula Autocomplete

To avoid mistakes when you manually enter formulas, start by typing an = (equal sign) and the beginning letters of the function you want to use. In the list that appears, double-click the function you want and follow the formula syntax that appears to fill out the appropriate arguments.

Use Function ScreenTips

If you aren’t familiar with the arguments of a function, start by typing the function name and an opening parenthesis. In the function screen tip that appears, click the function name to view the Help article to learn more about the function syntax and its arguments.